For those of you that follow my blog closely, I want to apologize for my months-long absence from posting articles. Not only have I had a number of serious health issues over the last few months, but I also launched my own cloud hosting company, born out of my cloud consulting business, and it has kept me extremely busy. Hopefully, I'm going to be able to get back into posting regular articles here soon. But, for those that have been waiting, here is a much requested article: installing Starwind … [Read more...]

Several weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to do a desktop refresh and update of my primary workstation. If you follow my blog, you will know that I work both as a Cloud Architect and Consultant, and as such, I work 100% from home. That said, I have a very nice setup already, with the primary "wow" factor that most people get when they walk in the office being that I have three 27" LED monitors on a triple monitor stand. It makes a pretty good impression, with the primary benefit being that it … [Read more...]

So just a fun post today. This is not my story, but has been one of those that I read many years ago, and has always been a favorite of mine. The server gods are capricious at times, and I've been a victim of them myself. A recent issue with a failed power supply reminded me of this, and I thought that I would share.
Lo, and in those days businesses relied on their hosting companies to provide them with excellent customer service, persistent uptimes, and rapid response during downtime … [Read more...]

Our ESXi forums and home server forum is now open for posting and community. Join us for discussions, questions, tutorials, and more on ESXi home labs, home servers, general IT, and more. The forum is a stand-alone installation, and does not require registration on the blog, but requires individual registration on the forums themselves. To register, visit the Home Server Blog Forum and create an account. You can also reach the forum through the link on the top level menu.
As the blog has … [Read more...]

ESXi 5.5 is finally here, and brings with it a lot of good, new features. Especially interesting, is that early tests seem to indicate that the USB passthrough issues that people were seeing on 5.1 have somewhat resolved themselves (although there are reports that USB 3.0 is working, but not USB 2.0). In addition, however, an interesting tangle for those of us with home labs relying on the free hypervisor has cropped up.
VMWare is moving is to get rid of the traditional vSphere Client that we … [Read more...]

Don Fountain

The HomeServerBlog.com is information about using real datacenter technologies in your home, configured in an easy to maintain, efficient, and most of all, cost effective manner. We focus on helping you with a lab that is multiuse, allowing for experimentation with virtualization and other technologies, home storage, home backup, and more.
Note that my posts are my opinion, and not any official view or stance of my employer. About Me